gideon: That? What did he mean by that?
lauren: Yes, that’s a good question. I mean, here’s just one example. One of the things he told me early on was that he believes that in just 30 years we’ll all be part cyborg, paying for things through some kind of chip in our bodies.
Max (audio clip): Sort of like contacts that have been enhanced with electronics beyond basic optical value, um, which you can actually pull out and get rid of the enhancements if you want to get him back to a pure human.
lauren: And that, you know, humans are on the verge of a global breakthrough brought about by technology.
gideon: So we’re all going to be part human, part machine, some kind of The six million dollar man kind of thing
file audio clip: Gentlemen, we can rebuild. We have the technology.
lauren: Yes, exactly. Between that and a combination of AI, it was just, we’re going to be fully automated as human beings. And Levchin acknowledged, by the way, that this is an ethically complicated view, but at the same time, this kind of enthusiastic prediction feels right now, like it’s from, I don’t know, the 2010s.
gideon: I think more like the 1970s.
[Six Million Dollar Man theme song]
lauren: Correct, correct, to continue with the The six million dollar man issue. And so in the context of buy now pay laterIt’s perhaps not so surprising that he pitches his company, Affirm, as some sort of tech fix for credit cards. Have you ever used a buy now pay later service?
gideon: Actually I never have.
lauren: So I have, twice. They are basically short-term loans with a fixed number of payments.
gideon: Isn’t that what a credit card is?
lauren: Yes, but different, because with a credit card you can carry that balance from one month to the next, and there tend to be higher interest rates. Affirm is different because they say that most of their loans don’t actually have fees or interest rates, but they also encourage you to pay something back in, say, four payments over six weeks.
gideon: So how do they earn their money?
lauren: Ah, that’s a good question. They do do some longer-term loans, and those will have some interest attached to them. But they are also paid by the merchants they work with. So let’s say you buy a Peloton from Affirm. Peloton pays Affirm a fee for essentially providing that loan.
gideon: Okay, so Affirm is interested in me only buying things?
lauren: Yes, and I asked Max earlier and I asked him again on this podcast what society would look like in the future if his dream of buy now pay later came true and people started using buy now pay later, not just for things like Platoons, right? things like groceries or gasoline.